The story of Sean Paul Lockhart
is a truly bizarre one, which basically guarantees James Franco would get involved in the film version. Lockhart rose to fame in the gay-porn industry as Brent Corrigan, predominantly starring in films produced by Cobra Video, which was owned by Bryan Kocis, who was murdered by two male escorts and wannabe rival producers in 2007. They wanted to make a film with Corrigan that would earn more money than any gay-porn movie in history, but — SPOILER ALERT — they’re in prison for life. The entire story was told in the 2012 book
Cobra Killer: Gay Porn Murder, and now it’s being adapted as
King Cobra, which stars Christian Slater as “Stephen,” who is based on Kocis, and James Franco as Joe, or Joseph Kerekes, one of the murderers and aspiring porn kingpins.
(Again,
it’s a hell of a story and one paragraph hardly does it justice.)
Garrett Clayton stars as Lockhart/Carrigan, and this is a far cry from his performance as Tanner in Disney’s
Teen Beach Movie and
Teen Beach 2. In addition to being caught up in an insane murder plot, Lockhart was also underage when he was performing in his earliest films for Cobra Video, so it’s safe to say that Clayton’s days of being a modern Frankie Avalon are over. (But let’s not rule out a role in
Back to the Beach 2, because Avalon is
back in the acting game in 2016, so anything is possible.) Interestingly, Lockhart
turned down a “small role” in
King Cobra, citing his desire to eventually tell the story in his own words. That should be a hell of a read when that book hits shelves.
